CBI goes to public for clues in Aarushi murder

Even as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is preparing to file a chargesheet in the sensational murders of Noida teenager Aarushi Talwar and her family's domestic help Hemraj, the investigating agency on Monday issued an advertisement asking people to come forward with clues.

The advertisement carried in daily newspapers on Monday announced a reward of Rs 100,000 for any person giving information about the mobile phones of the deceased and the murder weapon.

The CBI had announced the cash reward in September last year but has still not got any clues into the murder mystery.

In December, the CBI had said that the investigation in the murder case was complete and it will soon submit a chargesheet. But the advertisements are seen as a failure on the part of the premier investigating agency to recover any evidence conclusively fixing the guilt of the three persons accused in the case.

On May 16, 2008, Aarushi, the teenaged daughter of a prominent dentist couple, was found with her throat slit in her parents' suburban Noida home.

The Noida police initially suspected the family's domestic help was behind the killing, but retracted the claim when they found his body on the terrace of Arushi's house the next day.

The police then arrested Aarushi's father Rajesh Talwar but the court granted him bail.

The CBI, which took over the investigations May 31, pointed the needle of suspicion towards Krishna, Talwar's medical assistant, Raj Kumar, a domestic help for a family friend of the Talwars, and Vijay Mandal, another domestic help in the neighbourhood.

The investigating agency faced flak when Krishna, Mandal and Kumar were set free by the court for want of evidence.

The agency failed to submit a chargesheet in the case because it could not tender any concrete evidence to the court.